Once again my good intentions to get back into a more regular blogging cycle have been stymied – although this time the reasons are all good. For I am in Singapore, at the 2012 International Biology Olympiad. Fifty-nine different countries have sent students to compete in this prestigious competition, supported by senior academics & teachers. […]
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more on active learning in the biology classroom
This is a piece I first wrote for Talkingteaching 🙂 Yesterday I was up in Auckland at Scicon (the national secondary science teachers’ conference. There’ve been some great presentations, including a lovely on on bioluminescence by fellow sciblogger Siouxsie Wiles (did you know that our very own NZ glow worms mate for hours & then […]
Continue readingdivergent views on the importance of critical thinking
Regular readers will know that I spend quite a bit of time rioting about critical thinking: what it is, why it’s important, how to develop the relevant skills in our students. In fact, I tell my own students that one of the most important things they’ll gain from their time at uni is the ability […]
Continue readingwhat constitutes beauty? – tarantulas!
Wellington Zoo has just imported 106 Chilean rose tarantulas as part of a captive breeding program for these lovely animals. From the tone of a letter in today’s Waikato Times, the spiders are also in need of a public relations officer.
Continue readingreflections on the WEB days
We’ve just held the second day of the annual "Waikato Experience of Biology" (WEB) days – around 700 year 13 biology students, & their teachers, have come on campus over those 2 days for a program of seminars + some lab experience that supports their learning in several areas of their Biology curriculum. (There are […]
Continue readingthe great class-size debate
I haven’t blogged much lately, due to a combination of factors to do with my ‘day’ job. But I’ve followed the recent heated debate around proposed changes to class size with much interest, & I did manage to pull together something for my ‘other’ blog. So I’ve reproduced that here 🙂 Here in New Zealand, […]
Continue readinghow much do we value our teachers?
I’ve been following the various media reports on class sizes and performance pay for teachers with considerable interest. This afternoon I was sent a link to an article in the National Business Review – the article itself was quite… interesting (surely the number of teachers in this country hasn’t increased from 10-11,000 to 52,500 over […]
Continue readingsymphony of science: the world of the dinosaurs
I occasionally (very occasionally, right now, with my workload the way it is) watch the Symphony of Science series on youtube. Today I took a few minutes & watched "The world of the dinosaurs", which is quite good** in a techno- sort of way. Why am I mentioning this? Because when I was taking part […]
Continue readingmusings on national primary science week
As I mentioned in my last post, this week is National Primary Science Week, intended to provide science-focused professional development for primary school teachers and competitions, activities,and resources to support science teaching. I’d been asked if I’d contribute to the local program in Hamilton, & so today I trotted off to Berkeley Intermediate Normal School […]
Continue readingthe ero on primary school science: ‘should do better’
The Education Review Office’s report on primary school science is all over the news today: here at Yahoo, for example. You’ll find the original paper, Science in the New Zealand Curriculum: Years 5 to 8, on the ERO website. It does not fill me with joy and the following quotes from the report’s Overview should […]
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